Miro 4.0

Miro just came out with version 4.0. and its a clear hit. If you believe in supporting open source application, you have to try Miro. Miro is a open-source music and video player. It has been around since 2005 and was originally known as the Democracy Player. It is a part of The Participatory Culture Foundation a nonprofit foundation. You can use it download, watch, and listen to video and audio podcast. You can also add sites such as YouTube and Ustream and watch them within Miro. It is available for the Mac, Windows, and Linux.

With the newest update to Miro 4 it has become even better. The ability to buy mp3 and applications directly from the Amazon or the Google store within Miro has been added. Music stored in your Amazon Cloud Player can also be played within Miro. You can also add your iTunes music and movie library to Miro. Adding these libraries to Miro has no effect on ITunes, Miro simply points to the appropriate folders. If you have an Android device you can convert and sync music and applications to these device from Miro. I can see Miro being use with any Android device as iTunes is used with iOS devices. You can play almost any video format within Miro including HD video. You can also use Miro to convert videos into mp4/h264 formats which are playable on most portable devices. If you have Miro installed on multiple computers within the same network you can now stream and transfer media between these computers. YouTorrent is built right into Miro and is really fast. You also have access to media that is available from ClearBits which provides hosting and distribution for open license media. These are just some of the features that are available within Miro.

When upgrading from Miro 3.5 to Miro 4 I did run into a problem, when I added my ITunes library. It imported the library itself rather quickly, however it did take awhile to import the metadata. In fact it froze up a couple of times, if you have a slower machine like mine (Mac Mini 1.66 Ghz Intel Core Duo) I would recommend deleting the application and then downloading Miro 4. This seemed to fix the problem. Before you do this make sure you export your podcasts as an opml file, so they are easy to add back in. I have been using Miro since before it was Miro and I have always liked it, and it gets better with each version.